“He doesn’t live here in Rudolm?” Hugh said.
“Not now, he lives out beyond Jasper Peak. He is proving up on some kind of a claim, homesteading, right in the country that Half-Breed Jake calls his. He was here in April when war was declared and went down pell-mell to Duluth to enlist, wanted to go into the Navy, I think, these Swedes all do. But they wouldn’t take him, or for the army either, I don’t know why. He came back in a few days, looking grim and set and not saying a word to any one. He went right off into the woods again and we’ve scarcely seen him since. It was a cruel disappointment, I think, as bad as when he couldn’t build his road.”
“But why did he care so much about the road?”
Hugh’s curiosity about that mysterious highway had grown greater and greater, yet even now it was not to be satisfied.
“He had something big in his mind,” Jethro said vaguely, “so big I never quite understood it. He was a fellow who could always see farther than the rest of us, I think. John Edmonds used to say he did, although even he lost faith in the plan about the road at last, and that nearly broke Oscar’s heart. Some people even said they had quarreled, but I don’t believe it. Oscar wasn’t the sort to bear a grudge.”
Jethro thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned at last to face Hugh squarely.
“That is what I am getting at,” he said. “Oscar Dansk can find John and Dick Edmonds if any man on earth can do it. But some one would have to go out through the woods to tell him, otherwise it might be weeks before he hears what has happened. And the only person to go is you.”
“I?” cried Hugh in amazement, “I? Why, that’s impossible.”
“All right,” said the other briefly, “I was afraid maybe you would take it that way. Of course, after all, you oughtn’t to try it. Well, good-night.”
He shambled off into the dark, leaving Hugh still staring in astonishment. He wished that he had not said quite so decisively that the plan was impossible, so that at least he might have heard more of it. How strange it was that, after leading up to the subject so long, Jethro should have dropped it so quickly. Probably he himself knew that it was impossible as well as did Hugh.